Quantum education: Get ready for tomorrow

Driverless cars and robotic surgeries are only diminutive indicators of tomorrow’s world. Artificial intelligence driven by quantum machine learning will lead to increased automation that will transform life on Earth. Two-thirds of the skills humanity relies on today to make a living will become obsolete. Tomorrow’s citizens must be schooled in emerging technologies and lifestyles in an environment that surpasses today’s fiction. The responsibility for general life preparation shifted from parents to universities a few hundred years ago. Universities are now the stage where the scene changes; they must train tomorrow’s citizens to perform on a multidimensional scaffold. Sustainability, virtualisation of the physical experience, novel sensors, and communication strategies pose unprecedented challenges for university curricula.

Important milestones in the development of digital logic include the works of George Boole, Maurice Karnaugh, Claude Shannon, and Alan Turing. This field leapfrogged into the quantum world through the visions of Richard Feynman, Paul Benioff, and David Deutsch over four decades ago. Willfully or unwittingly, Quantum Computing and Simulations, Quantum Communications, Quantum Sensing and Metrology, and Quantum Material and Devices have entered our lives. These are the four verticals of GoI’s National Quantum Mission.

Although Newton’s laws describe most everyday phenomena, they cannot explain all natural phenomena, including some involving macroscopic objects. One needs the quantum theory developed by Planck, Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Dirac and others. Quantum theory is over a hundred years old. Along with the heroes mentioned above, distinguished scholars from Bharat, like Satyendranath Bose, C V Raman, and Meghnad Saha, made outstanding contributions to its development. Their works led to the development and understanding of semiconductors and lasers, laying the foundations of a societal revolution. However, certain aspects of the quantum principle of superposition, which produces the entanglement of objects, are only beginning to be exploited in yet another ongoing revolution. This developing scenario is called quantum sciences and technologies. 

An algorithm is a set of rules that produces an output for an input. It performs computations involving decision-making and data processing, essentially solving problems of interest. Current computers are built using quantum devices (such as semiconductors), but the calculation algorithm is driven by classical (Boolean) logic, using bits (0 or 1, i.e., a switch that is ‘off’ or ‘on’). Quantum computers employ quantum logic; they use quantum bits, or qubits (quantum superpositions of 0 and 1). Quantum computing employs abstract mathematics, but it is highly successful in describing nature. It produces exceptional power to implement computations. Quantum computers are, however, not expected to replace classical algorithms. They will nonetheless have the capacity to outperform classical machines in an unimaginable way, addressing the mounting demands of our changing world. The earliest schemes that made use of qubits are the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm (1992), Shor’s factorisation scheme (1994), Simon’s algorithm (1994), and Grover’s search algorithm (1996). Now, quantum computational schemes have advanced to address complex problems. 

The quantum future began a century ago, but the present is incubating unprecedented technology driven by quantum entanglement, which gives us a new sense of physical reality. Applications include the development of efficient algorithms for drug discovery, unbreakable encryptions for information and wealth management, secure communication, and ultrafast sensors and metrology that trigger rapid responses to unforeseen adversities. Encryption standards would be revolutionised under Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), though challenges remain to be overcome in developing practical protocols. 

AI and machine learning are already pushing technologies; the AI-ML tools would be supercharged when driven by quantum entanglement. There are only a few quantum computers available today, but in another decade, there will be thousands! The technological changes these computers will produce in the coming decade will surpass those of the past hundred years. Quantum algorithms will drive supply chain, travel, healthcare, financial services, entertainment and media, information processing, buildings and infrastructure, telecommunication networks, determining optimum routes amid multiple nodes in a complex environment, and more!

Emerging quantum technologies are intrinsically interdisciplinary. Expertise in mathematics, physics, and all specialised domains of engineering will continue to be needed, but in novel ways. Universities must reinvent their curricula, as tomorrow’s workers will use different tools and extraordinary ideas. Education must begin with familiar and intuitive ideas, but gently and swiftly ramp up today’s students to be prepared for tomorrow, before it becomes yesterday.

(The writer is RV Chair Professor at the RV University, Bengaluru)